Monero Successfully Completes First ‘Bulletproofs’ Audit, Mainnet Integration Coming Later This Year

After announcing in December 2017 its intention to incorporate the ‘bulletproofs’ mechanism into its transaction protocol, Monero (XMR) has completed a first independent audit confirming bulletproofs’ successful integration onto the platform’s testnet, barring a couple of miner security issues. According to Monero, bulletproofs are slated to be implemented onto the platform’s mainnet in September or October of this year.

Bulletproofs, a new technology for handling range proofs in cryptocurrency transactions, is a significant advancement for Monero—providing data savings, better verification times and lower fees according to the network’s developers. The new protocol has been running on the Monero testnet since December.

“Bottom line: they’re awesome, they work, the fees are lower, and they’re moving into testnet,” said the Monero blog on December 7, 2017.

The first audit (by Kudelski Security) of Monero compatible Bulletproofs has, bearing a few minor issues, been successfully completed! https://t.co/qZk3FdhJ5L

According to Monero, the bulletproofs mechanism could reduce transaction sizes on its blockchain by 80%, which could translate into an 80% reduction in transaction fees.

“Further, our initial testing shows that the time to verify a bulletproof is lower than for the existing range proofs, meaning speedier blockchain validation.”

As an improvement to the range proofs of the zero-knowledge proofs mechanism used by Monero, bulletproofs were proposed by Stanford’s Applied Cryptography Group (ACG) and members of the University College London and Blockstream.

Range proofs help to validate transactions on a blockchain, particularly zero-knowledge proofs which are used by privacy coins like Monero to conceal user transaction values. Range proofs, however, take up a large amount of data space, which can impact a coin’s blockchain performance. Bulletproofs do the same task as range proofs effectively but use less space on a blockchain.

“A range proof allows anyone to verify that a commitment represents an amount within a specified range, without revealing anything else about its value,” said Monero in their initial blog post.

According to reports, once two further audits are completed the bulletproofs implementation will be integrated into the main network during a scheduled protocol upgrade in September or October 2018. The next audits will be conducted by the co-author of the bulletproofs paper, Benedikt Bünz of Stanford’s Applied Cryptography Group (ACG), and Quarkslab.

It will be after the protocol upgrade that Monero users might see the impact of bulletproofs and if they do indeed translate into better network speeds and reduced transaction costs.

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